Well, that didn’t take long. Hours after the election was declared over, not only has Diane Feinstein reportedly been busy trying to get her ducks in a row for a new (yet futile) assault weapons ban, but the Obama White House has thrown their support behind talks on a U.N. Arms Treaty. Not outright support for the document — yet — but support for the continuing the talks. But even that level of support has Alan Gottlieb up in arms…

BELLEVUE, WA – Less than 24 hours after winning re-election, President Barack Obama’s administration joined with China, France, Germany and the United Kingdom, and more than 150 other governments, in supporting renewed debate on the proposed United Nations Arms Trade Treaty, confirming the worst fears of the American gun rights community.

The vote came at the U.N. General Assembly’s meeting of the First Committee on Disarmament at the world organization’s headquarters in New York City.

“It’s obvious that our warnings over the past several months have been true,” said Alan Gottlieb, founder and executive vice president of the Second Amendment Foundation. “The election was called about 11 p.m. Tuesday and by 11 a.m. this morning, we got word that the United States was supporting this resolution. We have to be more vigilant in our efforts to stop this proposed treaty.”

SAF Operations Director Julianne Versnel, who has been back and forth to the United Nations over this proposal, said the fight is not finished. The measure will be considered for finalization in March 2013.

“We will continue to monitor this issue and oppose any effort to enforce a global gun control measure,” she stated.

Amnesty International issued a statement Wednesday lauding passage of the resolution, saying the treaty will protect human rights.

“The right of self-defense is a human right,” Gottlieb countered, “and in this country, the Second Amendment protects that right.

“Just days ago as he campaigned for re-election,” he concluded, “Barack Obama told his supporters that voting is the best revenge.’ I guess now we know what he was talking about. The revenge he seeks is against American gun owners and their Second Amendment rights.”

The proposed arms treaty is intended to limit the flow of illegal weapons in an effort to keep then from being used to kill people. However, just like the vast and overwhelming majority of gun control legislation over the years, it seems to be targeted at a problem that doesn’t really exist and that they can’t really enforce. From Wikipedia:

The arms trade treaty, like the PoA, is predicated upon a hypothesis that the illicit trade in small arms is a large and serious problem requiring global action through the UN. This hypothesis was ultimately disproven through progressive improvements in scholarship in the 2000s. The global size, scope, and impact of the entirely illicit international trade in small arms turned out to be much smaller and less of a concern to countries themselves than first hypothesized, with internal societal factors rising in relative importance.

The fear among people like Alan is that this treaty could be used as a back door to allow new rules and regulations on the trade of firearms within the United States, since the treaty doesn’t seem to stop with international sales and might be applied to U.S. sales as well.

We’ll keep you in the loop as more information becomes available. But even I have to admit this doesn’t look particularly encouraging.

Advice unrelated to firearms: “unsubscribe” is a trap. Spam hosts blast emails out to a sequential list (Aaron@, Adam@, Alan@, Andrea@, etc) of potential unsuspecting citizens like you and me. Any response via the unsub ‘feature’ generates a “Hey fellas! We got a live one here!” on the spam host… and then you can bet dimes to doughnuts you’re going to be inundated with miracle balms that make your manhood 10x larger.

Best bet is to mark as spam and forget about it.

Apologies for off-topic, but I’m an InfoSec geek, spam is a nightmare as a malware vector, and I try to relay the above to anyone who will listen.

Nah, you’re probably right. I usually have good luck with unsubscribe requests, but I guess those are usually things I accidentally opted into, not things that show up through no action of mine, like the Rand Paul letters. Next time one shows up I’ll take your advice.

They aren’t Republicans they are NeoCons – totally different animal. NeoCons are neither “neo” nor “conservative” they are merely statist looters and plutocrats. Something the FF warned against.

All of which has nothing to do with the “liberals” who actually founded our country. Who would now be called “libertarians” and had the all ‘guns rights’ folks voted for Johnson instead of the gun-grab-flip-flopper-Mittens-punk, there might have been a real impact.

That’s exactly why I’m not renewing my NRA membership (only joined last year). If they had any integrity, they’ve had supported Gary Johnson and used their advertising power to promote him and we could have seen real change. Instead, they proved that they are nothing but shills for the Republican party and don’t give a flying frak about the Second Amendment.

16V you are right. Hell, the Republican party is a completely different animal than I remember in the 80s. As soon as Republicans change their tune about this global hegemony crap, drone strikes, indefinite detention/torture/imprisonment, and wiretapping, maybe ill consider supporting them.

One supports who they think is best early in the race. At the end, you vote the lesser of the two evils because its a ‘two party system’ and one can only change the system from within. A vote for candidates outside the system at the end of the campaign season in the national election is indeed a default vote for the greater of the two evils…..Barry Soetoro: the spread the wealth, socialistic, nanny state, big gov, community organizer. At the end, it is important to WIN the election. Gary was veted early and was not chosen by the party. Gary ended up with Roseanne Barr at less than 1%…..cue Clown Car and circus music. Mitt was not my pick either, but I am a grown up and have to adjust to a world where I will not get EXACTLY what I want and must make do with the best deal I can get, called compromise.

I love the “logic” of people like you. You keep voting for a candidate you admit is evil, then you sit around complaining that you get an evil person in office. Only you have the power to stop voting for horrible candidates. As long as you think it’s the “adult” thing to vote for a horrible candidate who will violate your rights, we’ll keep losing rights.

Please, looking at Romney’s record (not the bullshit he spewed, his actual record), show me one way in which he would be different from Obama in office.

I cant help you if you see no diff between Barry and Mitt. What moron would think Mitt is evil (dont take symbolic figures of speech…LITERALLY)? Not me. If I did, I would not vote for either of them. You dont get the gist of what I was saying above?

Yup. National elections are NOT the time or place to throw your vote away in protest for a candidate that was veted early and not chosen by the party. We all may have had favorites that we wish would have gotten farther in the process but realize that our guy aint in position at the end to make a difference (which is why we vote…to make a difference). Elections matter and have consequences….gulp….as we shall see with Barry, Reid, and the boys in power rather than a far better (though not perfect) Mitt.

Even if Obama does not come down on gun owners, he will help make a world where you need your guns more than ever for defense against gang bangers who are made to feel that you owe them and want to ‘level the playing field’ by taking your stuff or a SHTF scenario.

Don’t be so sure. State laws supposedly can’t override it either, yet we have a patchwork of state laws that restrict 2A freedoms. Our best hope should it come far enough is that there are not 67 Senators (2/3 rds) that would vote to ratify it.

We are now a nation of freeloaders with no responsibility for nor interest in our own destiny.

I have watched the last few generations raise their offspring with constant coddling and instant gratification my entire life, resulting in the entitled majority that just re-elected the only candidate that will treat them like their parents did. Only worse. But they clearly have yet to figure that out….

It goes way beyond Romney. Fact is that of the Americans who actually bother to vote, issues such as women’s rights (abortion) and Gay Marriage are important. As long as the Republican’s keep playing to their ever decreasing base of religious conservative OFWGs, they are going to keep losing elections.

Who didn’t see this coming? Oh, yeah, all those supposed gun owners that kept trying to say barry wasn’t an enemy to gun owners? remember this”Difi, pelosi, schumer, rahm, the clintons etc.” I said it enough.

So now the rest of the country gets to live with California style gun laws. Welcome to my world.

Jwm, Ralph, and I have been talking about this for some time now. Obama gets re-elected, and here come the talks again. If Obamacare can be passed under dubious circumstances, so also can a UN Arms Treaty. People lie to me every single day at work, so I have a well – developed BSometer.

Please help me to be wrong about this and continue to support the 2A. I’d be happy to eat my words if the 2A doesn’t get bastardized like CA gun rights have been.

Gasp, you mean all that “fear mongering” about Obama simply waiting for re-election so he can enact his radical rights-grabs without accountability to voters was actually right? Gosh, if only SOMEONE had been foreseeing this for the past 4 years!

And now that it’s too late to do anything about it (keep your naivety about Congress and ‘checks and balances’ to yourself), enjoy watching the Constitution continue to burn as it has for a long time.

I believe the goal for Johnson was not to get him to win, but to get him to 5%. If he could get 5%, his party would get federal matching funds in the next election, and a guaranteed seat at the table at the debates.

…which might result in him getting to be the spoiler that ensures a D win that cycle, like Perot in ’92.

Anyone else remember how that turned out?

The US has a two-party system. Minor parties who’s ideas catch on tend to be absorbed into one of the major parties. That’s what the Tea Partiers are doing- they realized that an independent TP would split the fiscal-sanity vote and ensure the D’s win- which they DO NOT WANT- so they’re taking over the R’s from the inside.

“Minor parties who’s ideas catch on tend to be absorbed into one of the major parties.”

Even when the major party that they’re absorbed into is the antithesis of their value system? well that doesnt work out too well! i guess using this logic you can understand why there is no libertarian merger with the republican party.

“That’s what the Tea Partiers are doing- they realized that an independent TP would split the fiscal-sanity vote and ensure the D’s win- which they DO NOT WANT- so they’re taking over the R’s from the inside.”

Right which is why the Republican party has been largely discredited and sneered at for the past eight years. Their absorbing of the controversial Tea Party and the Republican party’s perceived extremism are one of the reasons why romney never got into office. Im not specifically blaming them, but they were a key player and so was this “strategy”.

“Libertarians would benefit from studying that approach.”

No they wouldnt. Indicating by what Ive seen from the republican party in the past number of years, im glad Libertarians remain separate.

Yeah, because that one dude, George Washing-something didn’t warn specifically about the inherent evils of a party system. Nor did the most of the FF. Christ on a pogo stick with hooker on a sybian on each foot…

Somebody get in the time machine and kill that pathetic freak Jackson who propagated this bull feces.

As our electorate doesn’t get the choice between ‘turd with peanuts’ and ‘turd with corn’ is NO choice, we have long since crossed crossed into Idiocracy…

Can’t say I disagree with you on the Republican hate, but unfortunately, this last election was another iteration of defensive voting. Votes for Gary Johnson or anything other than a vote for Romney simply helped Obama. It sucks, but there it is. Without Nader pulling Dem votes in 2000, Gore would have won. The Republican party has been in decline for a long time. We need a fiscally conservative, socially liberal option, and the Libertarians in’t it.

Hey 16-V Thanks fro the welcome to the country. However, since I’ve been voting for Presidents here since 1976, I do think that I have a pretty good idea how things work.

Obviously, your education focus was on political science rather than math, so let me enlignten you to something. Let’s say we have an island nation with 11 residents. Let’s further say that there are three “parties” on this island – the Red, the Blue, and the White. Now, 5 of these residents want the Red candidate to win. The other six feel that the Red candidate is the worst thing that could happen to the island, but disagree on who should replace him. Four of the people vote for the Blue candidate, but the other two “can’t vote for someone they reasonably have no belief in” so they vote for the white candidate. You should be able to see how this goes down.

I agree that in a perfect utopia, we would vote the candidate whose beliefs match ours, everyone could quickly see their way to compromise for the benefit of all, and I would shit solid gold nuggets.

Unfortunately, we live in the real world which means that sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils. As I said, I didn’t like Romney either, but voiting for anyone else handed the election to Obama, who I disliked a lot more.

There is a time and a place for the protest vote. The 1984 and 1996 elections were largely forgone conclusions in that the incumbent was going to win anyway, so there was no harm in voting for the fringe candidate. However, Ross Perot siphoned off enough votes from Bush I in 1988 to give Clinton the win and Nader siphoned off enough votes in 2000 to flip it to Bush II. People who disliked Clinton or Bush II, but chose to vote for the third party candidate didn’t get their guy and instead let someone they likely hated a lot more than the other major candidate running the country.

The simple fact is that the libertarians will never be more than a fringe party. Enough Americans want more from their government than what the Libertarians want to give, so the vast majority will never support them. They will always be on the ballot, but they’ve been there since I started voting and have never garnered much support. It’s not like they get a bit more votes every election or anything like that.

A successful third party would follow the tenets of the “Rockefeller Republicans” (look it up) who once dominated the political scene in New England, which by the way once was solidly a Red region, not a Blue one. Fiscally conservative, yet socially moderate, they found a way to reach the largest number of poeple. Over time however, the fiscal conservatism part became less important to voters so the Rockefeller Republicans were replaced by more Liberal Democrat politicians.

I think however that given our national angst over the economy, the time may be right for those sorts of folks to reappear.

WTF are you talking about? I think you need to read about Gary Johnson and Ron Paul’s stances.

Republicans are anything BUT fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

“Unfortunately, we live in the real world which means that sometimes we have to choose the lesser of two evils. ”

Yeah? the real world? no thank you. picking the lesser of two evils means compromising my moral standards and personal ethics. The two were in practical agreement and patted eachothers backs over their stances on foreign policy, which really made my blood boil.

Let me give you a clue: republicans dont give a s–t about you, democrats dont give a s–t about you, they are both only interested in perpetuating the same circle over and over again.

Its called the Hegelian Dialectic. Study it sometime.

Btw, this is coming from somebody that witnessed the unparalleled transformation of the republican party from the 80s to this era.

Are you really prepared to shoot the cops when they come to take your guns? Most people aren’t. Unfortunately, we shouldn’t kid ourselves. If they somehow manage to ram through the legislation the Gun Grabbers want, we are screwed. We need to fight this at the polictical level. Once itgets past that hurdle, the game is over.

The game is never over. Do the oft brought up revolutionaries count for nothing? Plenty of them died on principle way before the revolution started in earnest and none of them knew whether their death would make the difference it eventually did. There are still those Patriots left.

I hope you are right. I just think that most in this country have gotten used to our soft and comfortable lives. Those aforementioned Patriots from the revolutionary days were stronger stuff by and large.

And plenty more would die in a bid to launch a new Revolution sparked by Draconian 2A Rights revocation. Even Obama says he’s committed to keeping a “Strong Military”, and what do you think it would be used for once it’s all brought home from Persia? There’s really no chance for a grass roots revolt to succeed. It would just turn into a suicide pact for committed gun owners and their families, while the rest of the comfort loving, apathetic citizenry meekly turns in their guns and watches those who don’t get arrested and slaughtered on TV.

The Gun Rights Movement needs to get over our hysteria and start thinking of new and innovative ways to get more Citizens committed to preserving all our Rights…and I am not sure that’s even possible nowadays, but it is a better alternative than the “cold, dead hands” mentality that’s been so prominent in these post election TTAG comments.

This bucket of ice water brought to you by “cold, harsh reality” and I’m sorry/happy if I pissed a lot of you off but made you think….

Perhaps Issac Asimov said it best, “Violence is the last resort of incompetence.”

Rabs words might have been mean yet there is some truth to them as imo the potential to take it out of context and to an extreme. Some of the poor want to be helped and will work hard to improve their lives, become productive, and not be a burden on society. Yet others want to be spoon fed welfare and some want society to support them for their bad decisions and lack of accountability. While I support to a limited degree a public safety net I also know that rewarding bad behavior will create more of it with many people. It’s a complex issue and I don’t see it as black or white, no racial pun intended.

AlphaGeek is a patriot and a supporter of the 2A. He has gone out of his way to introduce liberals and those who dislike guns to shooting at the ranges. To me that says activism on a real level. I do think he over-reacted to Rab’s comment. I also know that Alpha lives in the insane San Francisco Bay Area which is constantly vomiting up and coloring most issues in racial terms. IMO, living in the SF Bay is like suffering under a form of religious extremism.

The accusation of racism was because Rab used specific phrasing common among racists. It’s sometimes called “dog whistle” language, where everybody “knows what you mean” even though the speaker stops short of overt racism.

Pretty much without fail, in my experience, when someone makes a comment like the one above there’s a racist viewpoint behind it.

Note also that Rab did not argue my point regarding racism. I think that says quite a lot right there.

Crypto-racist? Heh. That would be difficult to keep up for any length of time considering the culturally and racially diverse team that I lead at work.

A big problem with liberals is that they ignore facts and rely on fantasy. Your post is a perfect example. By stating that I am racist, you are implying that poor people are a race and that stupid people are a race. That is simply not true.

I don’t hate the poor and stupid, I hate how they have destroyed this country

Idiots like me who pay (significant) taxes, buy guns, raise families, volunteer in our communities, and regularly spend time and money introducing new (liberal) folks to the shooting sports?

Yep, clearly I’m the problem, because I also believe in marriage equality for LGBT folks, a healthcare system where everyone gets treatment and costs don’t go up 20% yearly, and perhaps, just maybe, not sending the country on trillion-dollar military adventures in Iraq because of a family vendetta.

You caught me. I’m the one secretly undermining society. Pay no attention to the previous President who brought our country to the brink of disaster, or the legislators who enabled him to do so.

How the hell is that racist? Absolutely no mention of race was made! YOU are the racist because immediately in your mind the mention of coddling the poor and stupid equates to minorities. At least we now know your glaring gaps in logic. Look up Chris Matthews, he has the exact same gap in logic you do.

A big problem with liberals is that they ignore facts and rely on fantasy. Your post is a perfect example. By stating that I am racist, you are implying that poor people are a race and that stupid people are a race. That is simply not true.

I don’t hate the poor and stupid, I hate how they have destroyed this country.

nope. you need to crack open a history book. your generalizations are also a perfect example of this flawed thought process. Here’s a way to be thinking outside the box: perhaps many that are now dependent and poor were once tax-paying producers? yup. they sure were. they have the elites to thank for that.

“WLCE, please explain how Ms Free Obama phone and millions like her were once tax-paying producers”

Im not talking about that dumbass. Im talking about the contractor, the factory worker, the book binder, etc, etc that were moved from the middle class to dependent poverty due to the abysmal economic climate.

Yes, there are people that were once producers that became impoverished dependents. I know its a hard concept to grasp.

It’s actually a function of how the “conservative” movement has failed to properly engage the up and coming minority population and women. The Republicans lost big with women, Hispanics, An Asians, many of whom are hardly poor and stupid. OFWG voters form the core of the conservatives and they are a steadily declining demographic.

As much as I would love to see that ticket, the R’s will keep losing until they run a candidate who is not a white male. Romney would have had a better chance, imho, had he at least not chosen a white male running mate. A woman of any race would have been the best choice for presidential candidate – it would have split the female vote and pulled many away from Obama. A black or Hispanic female next time?

“That’s a bitter and hateful thing to say. I’m glad racists like you are aging out of the population.”

Unless you’re including vague references to prior posts, what precisely was “racist” about that comment? Bitter? Yes. Hateful? Perhaps, considering I disagree with the notion the government should be in the business of “letting” (and conversely, “not letting”) people breed or vote (for those legally able to). But racist? Why? Because they said “poor”? “Stupid”? When I hear references to society’s takers generally, my mind instantly conjures the “Occupy” crowd of mostly white, suburban, middle-class spoiled brats Tweeting on their iPads about being kept down by the man for having to actually, like, *pay* their college loans off some day. Oh, and condoms. Apparently I’m a 1%er hating hater who hates for not buying them condoms. Again, unless you’re mixing references to other posts of theirs I haven’t seen that indicate racism, I’m simply left to assume that it is in fact your notion of “poor” and “stupid” that is archaic. That is, in fact, where I would have levelled criticism … it’s not the “poor”, it’s the “takers”, a huge swath of whom are anything but poor except in their minds, forever seeking peer-group validation by pretending to be oh so down trodden. We know, because they Tweet it from their iPads. Every. Chance. They. Get.

I don’t like “takers” either. I find the people referred to in the original post as “poor” and “stupid” are sometimes “neither”. However, they are the ones with a “victim” mindset. Perceiving oneself as a victim mentally justifies unearned “compensation”. Now, how these “victims” got their mindset is a discussion that could fill another entire post.

I didnt like either choice, Obama or Romney. I dont like the mainstream media either. But we can only blame ourselves. Maybe not we Pro-2A folks but Americans in general. If we actualy educated ourselves as a country about voting and elections and most importantly the candidates, we might not be in this mess.

Yep, I said it. It is our fault, whatever happens to us. To America. If we all stopped saying a vote for the other guy (the little guy, non-Dem or Repub) is a vote for the guy we dont want and actualy voted for the other guy, maybe we would have a chance. Maybe if we stopped thinking that there are only two parties and voted for another.

I am usualy not a paranoid, conspiracy theorist nut but the rich and mainstream media are nothing without us. WE brought this on not them.

Multiple parties (Whigs, Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Democratic-Republicans and others) had their run in the early days but it was a case of “party Darwinism” that lead us to this unfortunate two party system we have now. The spirit of multiple parties lives on but all the most pertinent issues seem to boil down to “yes” or “no” hence the little room for “not exactly” parties. Maybe in time the majority of our country will tire of voting black and white but until then we’re saddled with the crap we have now.

Holy geez people. Read the articles. It was already on the UN agenda. It was already a scheduled March 2013 meeting and they already have a 2014 meeting. All Obama agreed to is to show up at the meeting. They waited to see who was elected so they could ask whomever had won if they would attend. Money says Romney would have said yes as well. All he agreed to was the meeting.

The difference is is that until Obama the U.S. wouldn’t have any part of those talks. Big difference, and to anyone that cherishes the Constitution the mere fact that we don’t outright refuse to discuss the issue is shameful and unsettling. I personally doubt Romney would have partaken. He was a flip-flopper but if he made it to office and had any hope of a second term (as they all do) he would have refused.

AWB for his state way before he wanted to be president and picked a lifelong hunter VP that publicly bought his young daughter a deer rifle recently. He’s a commensurate politician and went for the conservative vote. If he’d made it he’d be like any other first-termer and not do much to alienate the base that voted him in in the first place. Politics 101.

Recall that when this first was talked about, the US already adheres to certain bans although unofficial. You assume the whole proposal is bad. The US adheres to some of the ban already when in come to international trade and import. All it would do would make it official. An outright ban on the discussion without knowing everything makes no sense at all.

IndyEric, I respectfully disagree. There are plenty of American’s still willing to die for a cause. For example: just about every US soldier knows that death is a real option, yet they put themselves in harms way everyday. So do police, firefighters, coalminers, farmers, etc. Just about everyone puts themselves into some level of harms way, the day they craw out of bed. Most just don’t think about the odds. Death is part of life, I think most of the TAG’ers understand this quite well. I for one made peace with the fact that death isn’t an option. I’ve been fortunate to have lived a fairly fruitful life and I wouldn’t at all mind “going out” for a noble cause like defending our 2nd Amendment rights. If you don’t believe me, show up on my doorstep one day unexpected and threaten my family or rights and you will find out JUST how willing I am to die for a “cause” or my pappy’s shotgun.

Projecting your beliefs, morals, principals, decision making paradigm etc onto other people is a common logical fallacy. Just because you would roll over and piss on your stomach doesn’t mean everyone else would.

And once again A Democrat who said he was going to take citizens guns is re-elected and “shock” he immediately starts trying to take citizens guns. So according to some of you the correct response: Blame the Republicans.

Re: racism. I live in Philly. What do you call districts that vote over 95% for a candidate on a 90% turn out? This was a reparations vote. Time to get mine. Between fraud and divisions, mostly on racial lines, this country is done. Gun confiscation will be followed by martial law. Thugs will dominate society even more than today. Obama’s re-election was our “extinction event” as a nation similar to the meteor that wiped out the dino’s. We are in the beginning stages of a return to the feudal system of the dark ages. Conflicts of liberal vs conservative, public unions vs tax payers, young vs old makers vs takers will sweep away our liberties. The trouble is simmering and will come to a boil in our near future. All I wanted was to live in peace, earn a living, and enjoy my family and friends. I cannot see any conditions developing that will allow this to happen. The % of Americans that have become vindictive, jealous, lazy people has become a majority that will only grow in number. Call me an optometrist, but that’s what I see.

I have the feeling our Republic is on the great downswing as well. The demographics, numbers and trends are clear. Barry ran a brilliant campaign of shrinking the total vote by pumping over 2/3’s of a Billion dollars into negative ads (people tired of the slime and saying ‘screw it’) to get the people not to vote. He had a machine in the battleground states that made sure his core showed up. He got only 39% of the white vote, though most of the single white females voted for him. Over 70% of Jewish folks and homosexual/transgender people gave him the nod as well. The killer was the 71% Hispanic vote (along with 93% Black…a racist figure, in my opinion) that must be addressed by the GOP if they are to win in the future. 73% of Asians voted for Obama (why, I have no idea).
Makers vs Takers will be the battle as our nation becomes more like a European socialistic democracy. Our nation is great not because of our leaders, but in spite of them.